


MAG ??? - Founding Documents

by benoitmacon (larvae)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Epistolary, Fluff and Angst, Love Letters, M/M, Mall Gothic Romance, One Shot, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Pining, Post-Episode: e120 Eye Contact, Pre-Episode: e122 Zombie, Purple Prose, Statement Fic, transcription
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23765575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larvae/pseuds/benoitmacon
Summary: Statements of Mordechai Lukas and Jonah Magnus, collected from a series of letters exchanged between 1816 and 1818. Statement number 818????, ??th ???? 1818
Relationships: Mordechai Lukas/Jonah Magnus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	MAG ??? - Founding Documents

[ tape recorder clicks on]

[ sound of tape winding ]

**BASIRA**

Huh? ...oh alright you creepy little --

How do you know? How do you always know?

[shuffling of papers]

Hm, stupid question.

[static]

But you do always know. You’re always ready. I don’t think anyone’s ever put tape in you… Are you a part of him? Of Jon? Can he still hear us? Or did Elias send you?

[ tapping sound, like fingertips drumming on a table ]

Well, never mind. At least you’ve stopped popping up at random. Are you… hungry? For statements? Martin talks like you are. God, he treats you like puppies. Anyway… pointless…

Statement of… oh, uh, okay. Joint statement of Mordechai Lukas and Institute founder Jonah Magnus. Statements collected through a series of letters dated, uh… looks like fall of 1816 through spring of 1818.

[ clears throat ]

Statement begins.

**BASIRA [STATEMENT]**

My dear Jonah,

It seems wholly unlike you to turn a man from god. Through our acquaintance I have seen you lead many souls to yours, both as victims and as devotees. You are fixedly in the business of proselytization. I know this of you as I can recognize its antipodal nature in myself.

Yet I stand before you laid bare and found wanting, having betrayed the totality of my faith. I yearn for you, Jonah. Your absence pains me. It is an awl sunk into a heart I thought I’d hardened. I burn for you in earnest and I cast my troth aside. The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold, and I would only fail to serve a master that would keep me from your side.

Can you see me, Jonah, as I pen my plaintive missive? Do you watch in glee? In rapture? Am I to bleed myself dry just to see your delight? Know that I would, and gladly. Though I doubt you need me to tell you. Not when you’ve carved my meat away from my marrow and left me open on your slab. What are words when you can pull the strings of my heart through your teeth?

I have not known comfort since I last had you in my arms. Is it my fortune you seek? I offer it gladly, if only to tether you to me for longer. I would be your patron at the forfeit of my own.

I would have you, Jonah, at the loss of all else.

Yours eternally,

Mordechai Lukas

Dear Mister Lukas,

Your torment pains me as if it were my own, and though it feeds that to which I’ve pledged my soul, I find no joy in your confession.

When last we spoke of the workings of these forces to which we have moored ourselves in servitude, we had much to say of the kinship between our masters. Let us remember our words, then. Let us think of our relations not as heresy, but as worship. Let your heart call out in agony for my absence, and let your master rejoice in your anguish. Just as how you have laid your soul bare before me feeds the purpose of my savior, so too let your pining feed yours. May our meetings serve to whet the blade of our separation.

Write to me often, my dear Mister Lukas, and tell me of the pain in your soul and the ache in your heart. Know that I feel the same, and that I visit you often in my dreams. Know that I watch from afar your comings and goings, that I keep you close to me in your absence, that you are never far from my thoughts or out of my purview.

May our passions feed our masters in kind.

Yours beyond distance,

Jonah Magnus

Dearest Jonah,

You are a viper, silver tongued and unashamed. You claim bald unwavering truth as your master but you lie as you breathe. You twist the truth to fit your purpose. You temper its blade to strike as it suits you. The curves of your lips rewrite history. You turn my sincerity to pitch and weave the open air to bind my wrists. You are a scoundrel and a fiend and your hold on me is absolute. You are the millstone at my neck and I carry you gladly, in my heart and heavy on my shoulders. As you torment me I know you sit observing your good work across distance and in delight.

How am I to survive you, Jonah? You say my desire for you should feed the ache of my devotion, yet when I call on you I know you won’t deny me. I am powerless against you and you delight in my submission. How am I to overcome it when I wish only that your gladness may be unwavering?

You have bewitched me. I am a betrayal to myself. I know not how to go forward and I know not how to stop. You are merciless, and I am beholden to your cruelty.

Have what you will of me.

Mordechai Lukas

Darling Mordechai,

Your words strike my heart in their unfairness. After all, I ask for so little! Simply fear me, love me, do as I say, and I shall be your slave. You twist my words, you precious thing, and call me a liar for your mangling. Love, even untempered by our allegiances, is a sharp and whorling thing. It’s the very nature of it that pains you.

Yet love without pain is like food without taste, and love is after all a sacrament best taken kneeling, or else supine. All this to say that were I to torment you in earnest I would waste no time at my writing desk.

Am I to believe it is my heart you long for? And not some more appealing organ? I accuse you not of falsehoods, dearest, but of a startling lack of perspective. Unsurprising, as I’m sure the shores you drift away from blend perfectly into the horizon. As I’ve said to you across mediums and as I’ve called to you across seas: it is not my purpose to vex you, but it is my intent to indulge you. And though I love you as a man, I serve your opposition, and it is as its servant that I oppose you.

Are we to find ourselves at odds, dear one? I would mourn that course were we to take it. Let us instead find a central point for our two paths to cross, that I may behold your loneliness in its glory, and you may forsake me in the flesh that I may see you from a distance.

The letters I requested, have you written them? I have a purpose for them yet.

In sickness, health, and terror,

Jonah Magnus

Sweet Jonah,

Prince of lies and aberration, archfiend, creature of judgement! Relegated as you are to devildom you haunt my every hour. For how long must I bear the burden of your scorn that I may indulge in your affections?

You, wherein conspiracy and impulse dwell, who art my love, my life, my always, will be the end of me and mine. With this courting I put a pox upon my bloodline, that they may weep to reap what I now sow. I’ll open my veins for you to pour as print upon the page. For as long as you’d like, exactly as you’d like it. Take your pound of flesh that I may claim my own from you when I return. If this is how our gods see fit to feed, then let us feed them well.

Yours in perpetuity,

Mordechai Lukas

Dear Sir,

I write to you in haste that these words may reach you before you next depart to where I cannot follow. I’ve held onto your letters and sucked the marrow from their words. I need you, Mordechai. Turn back from where your heading guides you and return to me.

I am in need not only of your presence but your patronage. The grand undertaking I spoke of, the collection of fears, the well that I have sought to dig into the very heart of terror to feed that which watches all; the time is at hand for its construction. I need you here. For simple matters of land and deed and title, brick and mortar, straw and mud. For matters of my heart. For the simple need of you. For what watching from afar won’t give me.

Turn back to face me, dear one, that I may turn my back to you when you arrive. I need you as I have never needed you before. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Eagerly yours,

Jonah Magnus

**BASIRA**

[ extended silence ]

St… statement ends.

Uh... well, there’s no supplemental materials. No recorded follow up. Although, I guess I’m sitting in the follow up. I guess we all are…

Hm.

[ uncomfortable shuffling of papers ]

Alright. End recording.

[ tape recorder clicks off ]

**Author's Note:**

> Mordechai and Jonah misquote, paraphrase, and plagiarize Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, the Marquis de Sade, Bram Stoker, Cradle of Filth, Cersei Lannister, and Jareth the Goblin King. Hats off to you if you catch all their stolen words.


End file.
